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Red Sox tickets go on sale Saturday morning at 10 and those lucky few who got selected in the team's Christmas at Fenway drawing just couldn't wait to start lining up all the way around Fenway. "With Bobby Valentine as manager, who needs a closer?" one fan said with a sheepish grin.

Well, not really. But the sheep will hit the fan in just a few hours when the Red Sox release single-game tickets for "select" April and May 2012 games. The flock is ready to get fleeced. If you don't make it over to Fenway, join a few hundred thousand of your closest pals by visiting redsox.com to eventually claim your spot in the on-line waiting room. That offers a nice preview of purgatory for those who perhaps haven't lived the virtuous life of Tim Tebow.

History tells us more than enough fans have already forgotten the loss of Jonathan Papelbon, the Collapse of 2011 and Head-West Heidi's defection to the Lakers to skip Saturday's opportunity to fill John Henry's coffers. Put the blinders on and dream big for 2012. "We hired Valentine. The Blue Jays are ripe for the taking." Who can't wait to shell out $55 (assuming they get through and pay face value) to sit behind a couple of poles in Section 13 on Thursday, May 10th against Cleveland? Calling for boycott of the Red Sox is foolish. It might be nice, though, if enough folks held off from buying tickets either from the team or secondary sources for some of those early-season games until the team did something of substance on the plus side to improve from 2011. Life will go on if the sellout streak doesn't reach the 725-game plateau.

If clearing out the deadwood (Varitek, Wakefield, Drew, Bedard, etc.) is the biggest improvement the Red Sox make between Robert Andino and Fort Myers, tickets ought to be plentiful for the April 30th game against Oakland. Bringing back David Ortiz certainly doesn't qualify as an "improvement" over 2011's 3d-place effort. For that matter, it's not much on an "improvement" over 2010's 3d-place effort, either. Papi's retention was a top the "bare-minimum we have to do to get anyone to show up on Saturday" category. Keeping Papi became a must for this team whose other big off-season coups were picking up the option on Marco Scuatro, re-upping Andrew Miller and John Lackey's Tommy John surgery.

The good news. The Red Sox may not have gotten themselves any top-notch pitching but there's no doubt they have a front-line pitch man in Bobby V.

Well, who doesn't hate the Yankees? That was Valentine stating the obvious Wednesday in Dallas. It was refreshing for someone in the Red Sox organization to voice those sentiments. Cha-Cha videos are one thing, but at least there aren't any posts on You Tube of Valentine glad-handing and hugging Yankees fans like Ortiz. At times, the Red Sox-Yankees nuclear arms build-up of 2003 seems like 1,000 years ago. If Valentine can inject some venom back into the eternal struggle against "The Evil Empire" - even with his infomercial smile - we'll happily take it.

Valentine, who at 61 appears to be in much better shape than most of his pitching staff, is so dynamic, so persuasive, so ebullient, he probably has Ben Cherington convinced that the Red Sox GM actually made the decision so hire Valentine. If you missed it, check out the impromptu sitdown Valentine and Terry Francona did on ESPN. The more we see of Tito and the more time elapses since the collapses of last season, more fond we grow of Francona and the worse the team looks. Time wounds all heels. Thinking ESPN got the better of that job swap.

Bobby V. will make things interesting - especially for the folks who cover the team on a day-to-day basis. Covering a beat like the Red Sox with a personality like Valentine running the show is like cooking for Albert Haynesworth. There's plenty of work but just show up and he'll do the rest. For fans, it's not so easy. Take the four or five worst in-game moves Francona may have made last season and substitute Valentine. Wonder how many of Bobby's decisions would have been any different?

But Valentine's most important attribute will come to fruition on Saturday at 10 a.m. Get out your credit card. You'll have plenty of company.

Don't forget to join our weekly Patriots in-game fan chat Sunday against the Redskins. We'll get it started at about 1. As always, let us know what you think. Post your thoughts here, on our Obnoxious Boston Fan Facebook page or e-mail them to me at obnoxiousbostonfan@hotmail.com. And don't forget to follow us on twitter @realOBF. Thanks for reading. Pass the clicker.

This blog is not written or edited by Boston.com or the Boston Globe.
The author is solely responsible for the content.

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